World Antiques [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION The world of antiques as we know it was largely the creation of the late Victorian period. We can trace its coming of age rather sharply at the turn of the century in the advent of collectors' magazines; The Connoisseur (1901), The Burlington Magazine (1903), Antiques (1922) and Apollo (1925). With their arrival the type of research, scholarship and attitudes which had hitherto been almost exclusively reserved for painting or sculpture began to be extended to include furniture, tapestries, ceramics and the whole gamut of the domestic artefacts of past ages. Simultaneously this development was mirrored by the fashionable furniture emporia of the day, such as Gillow's and Maples, who opened sections of their shops carrying stocks of 17th- and 18th-century furniture and domestic fittings. That the American journal Antiques included throughout the 1920s a regular feature entitled 'Living with Antiques' reflects the fact that this was still something of a novelty which its readers needed to learn about. Since then, and more particularly since 1945, the cult of antiques has reached an apogee reflected in a wide range of movements: the professionalisation of the trade in such bodies as the British Antique Dealers Association; the multiplication of sale rooms and the extension of the sale seasons; the arrival of antiques fairs as regular features up and down the country; the weekly antique street markets in London and in Paris; the glut of collector's books evidenced in the art book explosion of the 1960s; the popularity of antiques programmes on both radio and television; and the proliferation of societies dedicated to their study. In Britain alone there are The Ceramic Circle, the Glass Circle, the Silver Collectors, the Costume Society, the Furniture History Society and the National Association of Decorative and Fine Art Societies, while many similar societies exist in Europe and America. Perhaps even more significant is the acceptance of antiques as an important and fundamental ingredient of modern interior decoration. The growth of the cult of antiques is one of the most puzzling phenomena of our age. Not only have we witnessed the spread of collecting throughout every sector of the society, but in addition we have seen an incredible extension of what comes within the bracket of the term 'antique'. A glance at the closing chapters of this book reveal much about this transformation-the term now embraces areas virtually unheard of in this context a generation ago, for example chess sets, toys and pastimes, Victorian papier mâché, costumes, needlework, the accoutrements of war and scientific instruments. And, as for period, 'antiques' now stretch with certainty into the 1950s. As quickly as a style becomes obsolete and definable in retrospect it becomes the province of the collector, entering the magic category of the antique. All this can only be described as bewildering, both to an older generation of collectors for whom antique was old oak or gracious Georgian vyith 1830 the safe watershed, and equally to a younger, because of the sheer range, both in terms of time span and of the artefacts themselves. The concept of this book springs from this very dilemma, and is an attempt to give the collector some comprehensive guidelines. The options, of course, are essentially personal ones — some may choose to collect vertically within a given media or horizontally within a period, or indeed to be, something much less compulsive, a magpie. But whichever path the reader may take, a knowledge of past styles and artefacts is essential to any would-be collector ; indeed to be visually illiterate is no longer acceptable to any educated person. Such ignorance is also, of course, financially shortsighted. In an era when money has become almost meaningless, the purchase of antiques and works of art has combined safe investment with personal discrimination and knowledge. This is no new phenomenon ; possessions have always been seen as financial assets in times of crisis, as well as being treasured for their beauty and workmanship. In earlier times it was mostly personal jewellery anti plate which went into pawn, was sold off or melted down for the gold or silver content, while in our own age such crises are met by the sending of things to the sale room. Thus the triple role of antiques - as furnishings, as investment and as an expression of personal taste— remains remarkably consistent. To the discerning it will always, however, be the last of these aspects which remains the most fascinating and challenging of all. Roy Strong Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London